Saracens were assured of finishing first after Northampton's draw at Bath on Friday night, but Worcester had a chance, however absurdly remote, of avoiding ending up on the bottom. It did not last long, but the statistically weakest team in the Premiership has belatedly figured out what it takes to survive among the elite, just a month too late.

Saracens' six-try victory took them to 85 points, a Premiership record, and they are set to rest most of their first choice team at Leicester next Saturday in the final round of the regular season, a decision that will make it likely that the Tigers secure third place in the table and a playoff semi-final at Northampton. Their only concern was an early hamstring injury suffered by Mako Vunipola and Owen Farrell's foot problem that meant he did not take goal-kicks for the second week in a row.

Saracens, along with Northampton, are in discussions with Premiership Rugby and BT Sport about when the playoff semi-finals should be played. They are scheduled for 17 and 18 May and the two clubs, who have secured home advantage, have European finals the next weekend. The current schedule would mean that the Saints would have a five or six-day turnaround and they have raised the possibility of playing the first playoff on the Friday night, a week before their Amlin Challenge Cup final with Bath, themselves chasing a playoff place, with Saracens featuring on the Saturday, seven days before their Heineken Cup final against Toulon.

Bath playing Saracens would provide a further complication. Both matches could be played on the Saturday, but BT are televising the FA Cup final that day and would prefer the playoffs being spread over two days.

Worcester can only dream of such dilemmas, returning to the Championship after their 20th defeat of the campaign with the route back looking more hazardous than on their previous ascents to the top flight. They enjoyed periods of superiority in the contest between top and bottom, but they were two tries down in nine minutes, simple moves along the line ending in Alex Goode giving scoring passes to his two wings, David Strettle and Chris Ashton, who took their combined tally for the season in the league and Europe to 32. Ashton secured the bonus point for his side that guaranteed victory eight minutes into the second half and ensured Saracens would finish with the highest tally of points in the history of the Premiership, surpassing Leicester's 83 in 2001-02.

The Warriors were soon laying down their shields, the flanker Jackson Wray scoring two tries in three minutes to complete his hat-trick. There had been a moment in the first-half, when Chris Pennell scored his third try in three matches after Ryan Lamb delayed his short pass, when the prospect of Worcester taking their struggle for survival to the final day of the season flickered: Wasps had snuffed out Newcastle's early lead and Sarries, dropping off a tackle or two, appeared to be distracted by grander occasions to come this month.

They finished the match with 12 men, David Strettle and Neil de Kock sent to the sin-bin for minor infringements after Will Fraser had gone off with all the replacements used in a match where Tim Wigglesworth, a referee who has had a challenging few weeks, never threatened to take control. Worcester's first try was preceded by a series of scrums that saw the front rows collapse or pop up, prompting him to issue a warning before showing a yellow card to Rhys Gill for not binding properly.

The match should have been a frolic in the sun but it was clotted with stoppages as if control were measured in the number of times the whistle were blown. It may have saved Worcester from a heavier defeat and at least they won the penalty count comfortably. They finished strongly with Semisi Taulava and Pennell scoring tries in the final seven minutes.

Worcester would have fared much better had they played in the first couple of months of the season as they have in the last two, but they were horribly unprepared for the campaign having allowed a coaching regime to decide who to sign and let go and then replacing it. They have missed the tactical nous of the outside-half Andy Goode, who was released last summer despite wanting to stay.

Lamb has made a difference in the position since joining from Leicester in the New Year and his pass for Pennell's first try showed his skill, but it was Goode's wonderful ability to contrive more victories than a mediocre team is worth that proved the difference between staying up and going down.